Taking your series of posts in no particular order:
[ul]
[li] I would argue that the hundred million or so google hits show imprecise but not incorrect uses of the English word “cause.” I recognize this is a fine distinction to draw; I believe that in questions of logic fine distinctions are not irrelevant.[/li][li] But you’re absolutely right that you are under no obligation to accept that fine distinction. I certainly didn’t mean to imply otherwise, and my original statement was more careful.[/li][li] The actual number for “smoking causes lung cancer” is about 122000, which is so weird I must be doing something wrong! “Smoking can cause lung cancer” gets about 1/2 as many hits by the same methodology, which suggests but does not prove that drawing the distinction between the two statements is hardly an act of lunacy.[/li][li] It’s not particularly obvious to me that “is partly responsible for” is logically equivalent to “makes more likely.”[/li][li] It’s also not terribly obvious to me that they’re different![/li][li] I would trust the SEP over Wikipedia any day, but even if we use Wikipedia, it is helpful to read more than the executive summary. You’ll note that among other things it discusses “probabilistic causation” and “counterfactual causation,” both of which I already linked you to in more detail. Were you to check the latter, you would find no mention of probability. One formulation, for example, is loosely “A causes B if and only if (1) if A happens, then B happens, and (2) if A does not happen, then B does not happen.” [/li][li] As far as quantum randomness: As a physicist working in quantum mechanics, it seems to me that the impact and even meaning of randomness in QM is overstated by people who do not do QM.[/li][/ul]
At any rate, I don’t see this as particularly productive, do you? It can’t continue long anyway as I’m off for the Labor Day weekend shortly. Certainly I concede that if one understands “cause” to mean “makes more likely” then the alien is not making an error. And if “cause” is understood in the counterfactual sense above, for example, then the alien is making an error.